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Feb 3 Full Moon Party

O.k., I wasn't planning no writing anything now, but since I'm bored waiting for my ferry I may as well put something down on the diary.

Importantly, it's now 8:20am on Saturday morning and I've been up since 6am on Friday morning so if I wander/waffle/misspell, well tough :)

Why the long day? Well, after setting off yesterday morning with advice that we would leave Ton Sai (our current home) at 11 and arrive on the island of Ko Pa Nagn at 6:30pm. Well, we were aware that the Thai tour operators were a little, say 'liberal', with their shedules, we expected to be there for 8ish. How wrong we were, instead the bus left at 10:30, and we arrived onto the island at 10ish. Loonnngggg day spent on buses, sitting in bus terminals, and a ferry.... We were starting to get worried that the party wouldn't live up to expectations after such an epic journey. Well, our fears were relaxed when we met some others who had been travelling without sleep for 2 days straight just to make it for the Full Moon party. Hmmmm, it must be good.

Some quick intro info, the island has a standing population of 10,000. On full moon night, it's closer to 20,000. Five to ten thousand partygoers turn up just for this one night?!? The guidebook describes it as "Apocalypse Now without the war". Good comparison as it turned out, the beach party was WILD. To warm up, you buy your sandbucket full to the brim with a spirit of your choice, and topped off with Red Bull and Coke. Stuff a couple of straws in it and you've the perfect mug for sharing. And the sheer noise, there must be 10 bars all with concert-size-speakers pumping out, well essentially any type of music you can dance to, the harder and faster the better. Well, what a laugh, we all lasted till about 5am, before half the team decided to crash on the beach. Amazingly, I was still going (we hadn't lived up to the Irish reputation and hadn't been drinking all night) so I got another quick 20minutes in, before sitting back to watch the mellee. Even for the likes of myself who isn't a big clubber (and that's an understatement :), it was a howl. Definitely put it on your to-do list everybody, it's magic. So, after sitting up for sunrise, and the obligatory swims by a large quantity of the party-goers, we've now been tanking up on coffee and food before the return leg.

Anyway, I'm glossing over some stuff as you can guess but suffice to say there's everything here from body paint, to burning signs (see pic), to any drink of your choice (as long as it fits in a bucket of course).As for the weirder and wonderful stuff that we saw, well as the saying goes: "What happened in Thailand, stays......". You can work out the rest :)